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Uwe Boll Just Cursed You Out and Here’s Why

If you know the name Uwe Boll you may have just shuddered a little. Boll is the notorious German filmmaker who, for years, has been producing some of the least well received movies in the history of filmmaking, which is to say his movies often get reviews that feature lines like –

“The late Gene Siskel once devised a simple method of measuring a film’s worth: ‘Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?’ ‘Alone in the Dark’ doesn’t come close to matching that standard.”

And –

“So willfully opposed to everything that decades of refinement have established as cinematic grammar that I am unable to decide if Boll is a genius or just evil.”

People really have to dislike your films for them to come up with insults like these that transcend mere name calling and try to existentially destroy you and your work. For his part, Boll mystified fans and critics alike in the early 2000s with his ability to constantly receive money for works like House of the Dead and Bloodrayne, video game adaptations that featured terrible acting, questionable effects and storylines that probably made more sense to someone abusing peyote. How did he do it? Thus was born the legend of the German tax loophole.

Legend has it, for a time in Germany, if you invested money in a film that failed to be successful, the government would end up covering your losses and then some on your taxes as a method of stimulating investment in German films. So if you gave Boll $1000 to make a movie that failed at the box office, you’d somehow make even more money back on your taxes. Or so the story went. Regardless, the tax loophole was eventually closed and yet Boll still made movies. But more than this, he became a vocal critic of his own critics and, in fact, even challenged a number of his harshest critics to a boxing match. Noticeably absent was Seanbaby who, rumor has it, was willing to accept the challenge until Boll found out he actually had fighting experience and was built like a superhero with a colorful Mohawk, at which point Boll backed out. He did, however, beat up some other poor fellow.

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Boll continued making movie like In the Name of the King which had two sequels, both of which seemed to be part 2, a couple more Bloodraynes, a Far Cry movie and even Blubberella. He also was more than willing to explain to fans and critics that his movies were better than any crap in Hollywood, particularly crap made by Michael Bay, who Boll really seems to hate. And somewhere along the way, Boll made a movie called Rampage.

With a 6.3 on the IMDb, Rampage is one of Boll’s bets received movies ever. There are critics, real ones, who admit to thinking it’s not even that bad. Boll had actually made a film not everyone hated. The plot? A hard done by losers snaps, builds full body armor, and goes on some kind of killing spree to get revenge against the people who wronged him. The film did so well, they made a sequel. And even that did well. So they planned a part 3. And that’s where Boll hit a little bit of a speedbump.

In an attempt to crowdfund Rampage 3, Boll went to Indiegogo where things went poorly. To start with, you needed to donate at least $100 if you even wanted to get a DVD copy of the finished movie, so basically the incentive part of the campaign was utterly screwed from the beginning. Boll raises under $7000 of his $100,000 goal. But he felt like he could make a go of things at Kickstarter, so they tried it again. This time, $10 would get you a digital copy of the film and $20 would get you a signed copy of the film. That’s actually a really good and reasonable deal. But it was too late, the campaign made more money but still fell short of the goal. And here was Uwe Boll’s response.

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And uploaded at the same time was this video which you should really watch if you want to hear someone who has made movies that, hated or not, actually got into theaters as he calls celebrities like George Clooney and Angelina Jolie “retarded” and “piece of s#!t”

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It’s safe to say Boll is not a happy camper today, his crowdfunding effort is over and he’s still as convinced as ever that Hollywood is a garbage dump and he’s making important films.

If you’re not familiar with Boll, you have gotten caught up in the passion of his rant – sometimes he even sounds reasonable doesn’t he? And was he right about Darfur? He did make a film about it when no one else was giving it much press – but did you see the film? Or worse, did you hear how he made it? He used real Darfur refugees and had them re-enact their own rapes so he could capture “honesty” in the film. If that doesn’t make you faceplam, nothing will.

Boll likes making movies, that has to be clear. And he’s no fool, despite the cheap shots people will take at him when mocking his movies. Listen to him sometime discussing real topics in an even tone, when he’s not angry, and he comes across both knowledgeable and persuasive. You can see how he keeps getting investors to take a gamble on him and actors to work with him even after horribly insulting them, which he does frequently, and even in those videos, (sorry, Ben Kingsley). His main problem is he has no concept of how the world around him works, and how other people react, think and feel. If people don’t think like him, he’s completely at a loss for how to deal with them and they become “retards.” People who don’t like his movies are retards. People who criticize him are retards. But if he makes a movie with camera work so shaky audiences literally can’t tell what’s happening on screen, who messed up? If he casts Tara Reid as a scientist and she can barely deliver her lines, who messed up?

In any event. Boll hates us all now, thanks to Kickstarer and Indiegogo and we may never get to see his third bite at the mass murderer apple. Will we, as a people, move on? Time will tell.